When observations are marked as “Recent Evidence” but the organism is not present, there is almost always a discrepancy between when the living organism was there, and when the observation of the evidence took place. This is problematic when observers/identifiers assign phenolgy annotations, such as life stage. An observation of an exuvia from a cicade, for instance, marked as “Adult” but the observation is in winter, creates false data points on the phenolgy graphs.
In the DQA, it describes “Recent Evidence” as evidence of presence up to ~100 years ago. This leads many to the impression that “Recent Evidence” is only to exclude fossil evidence, but I believe it is to indicate that there is evidence the organism WAS HERE, but that it is NOT HERE RIGHT NOW. I believe the creation of the phenology graphs supports the idea that observation date should be indicative of the date the LIVE animal was there.
There seems to be a split within the community as to whether this is the case or not. I put forward the argument that a feather can’t have a lifestage applied to it because the lifestage applies to the living organism that it came from. That feather was never an egg, for instance… and that exuviae is not an adult, but is the exuviae shed by an adult. This view that I expressed received support from some, and pushback from others.
This discrepancy in how the community views whether “recent evidence” in the form of feathers and the like should or should not have lifestages associated with them can be solved by excluding observations marked “Recent Evidence” from the phenolgy graphs. The only other solution is to mark observations that have both phenology annotations and “Recent Evidence” as “Date Inaccurate”, which would no doubt be just as polarising within the community.